Musician, artist and Small Engine Gallery co-curator Raven Chacon played Song Roulette with us this week. He doesn’t own an iPod, so he got creative and groped around in the dark. Check out his diverse Song Roulette results.

Anyone who’s interested in sound- and art-installation in the Southwest is probably familiar with Postcommodity. The collective, comprised of four Native American artists working in a variety of mediums has been creating politcally charged and culturally inquisitive work since 2007. For this week’s arts profile, the Alibi caught up with member Raven Chacon to discuss the direction of Postcommodity in the wake of a large grant and an upcoming installation in Australia.

Postcommodity’s Raven Chacon on art without borders

By Sam Adams

Toward the end of 2012, arts collective Postcommodity intends to raise 20 acrylic balloons that are 10 feet in diameter parallel to the U.S.-Mexico border. "Part of this project is that it's this kind of sculptural piece," says Raven Chacon, "this kind of fence, which will run along the border. But part of it is performance in a way of us having to navigate what is safe to be called a battlefield."

Symposium spotlights Nuevo Mexicano composers

By Samantha Anne Carrillo

This year’s John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium presents 55 contemporary composers with meaningful connections to New Mexico. Themed with the state's centennial celebration in mind, all the featured artists live here, studied at UNM or lived in New Mexico for at least a year.

Raven Chacon talks motel butchery and mayhem

By Samantha Anne Scott

On Saturday, Mesa Ritual—Raven Chacon and William Fowler Collins—performs at the opening installment of the High Mayhem Emerging Arts fall series, a four-weekend event that showcases Nuevo Mexicano and international sound art. Samantha Anne Scott caught up with the super busy Chacon to discuss the festival and his various projects.

Postcommodity

A balance of painterly and graphic techniques are lent to gloomy blacks, whites and grayscale in what appears to be a bird-laden landscape print. Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist and Nathan Young make up the interdisciplinary American Indian arts collective Postcommodity. On Friday, June 10, they'll be doing a noise show at the Santa Fe Art Institute's Tipton Hall. The show begins at 6 p.m. Admission is $10 general, $5 for students/seniors/members. (Jessica Cassyle Carr)

Raven Chacon curates the city’s underground

By Jessica Cassyle Carr

In life there are certain truths: What goes up must come down, all's fair in love and war, a stitch in time saves nine and one who makes a synthesizer out of a cougar pelt is wicked awesome. Musician, teacher and installation artist Raven Chacon is familiar with the latter, having made just that as part of a Winnipeg-based project by his interdisciplinary American Indian arts collective, Postcommodity. When the piece is pet, the pelt synth purrs, and when it’s twisted it raars. The group also fashioned an antler cello and antler harp, and made a drum from a boar bladder and a coffee can. The instruments, says Chacon, are meant to be played by a futuristic tribe representing the last of its culture.

Sublime Sonics

The scary little people hidden in the trees want to you know that Monday, April 19, sees performances of animal-sound music and different forms of drone by Infinite Body, EARN, Lab Rat and Postcommodity. The show begins at 8 p.m. at Thundermind Corrective, and for $5 you might find out what “intense loud doom drone” means. (Jessica Cassyle Carr)